How to address your inflammation with precision with Dr. Shivani Gupta

In today's episode of Living Light, I have the honor of interviewing Dr. Shivani Gupta. In this interview, we talked about how to decode inflammation using your dosha, or what she refers to it as your elemental design. When you understand who you are, you become far more impactful in your own health and wellness than understanding your disease. It makes more sense to know yourself than to know your disease, because if, when we know ourselves, we can live in alignment with our biology and with nature, so we're less likely to develop one of the thousands of different diseases that we have been able to diagnose as humans. This episode is fantastic because for me, it helped me have a ton of breakthroughs. And I know that if you listen carefully and you're tuned in and present, you'll have your own breakthroughs as well. Ayurveda, which is referred to as the essentially the science of life, how to live is an ancient practice, has been around for thousands and thousands of years and has helped billions and billions of people over many, many, many years. It's something that we now have the scientific validation for. And many of the famous trending concepts like circadian rhythm and different types of therapies like hot, you know, hot and cold therapies and even detoxes, these have been part of Ayurvedic medicine again from the very beginning. This is both timeless and timely wisdom, and it really helps you learn about who you are. And to me, that's very important because when we know who we are, then we can serve ourselves better and we can serve those around us better. If you're listening to this, I want you to listen through the context of health, through business, through relationships, through all the different lenses through which you look at life, because knowing yourself can help you improve all of them. So please enjoy this interview. Subscribe if you're enjoying these conversations. Comment. I love to see your feedback. And of course, please share, because more people need to hear this this message. Enjoy my interview with Dr. Shivani Gupta. Shivani, welcome to our Living Light podcast. It's so exciting and I am so grateful that you're able to join us today. You have been a big part of my life over the last couple years, helping me understand myself better through the work that you do. You also have some amazing products that have helped me, products that are designed to help reduce inflammation, which is really the silent, you know, killer and ruiner of people's quality of life. And that's an area that, of course, we're going to dive into today. And what I really, really admire about you is that you're an Ayurvedic practitioner and Ayurveda is probably what we might call the original functional medicine, the original personalized medicine. And I'm excited to dive into that as well. So first and foremost, welcome and secondly, thank you for being here.

Of course, thanks for having me.

So let's start with Ayurveda because that might be a new term to people, maybe they've heard of it in passing. But let's create an operating definition of what is Ayurveda and why should people care for sure.

So Ayurveda is this ancient system of health, healing and medicine from India that's over 5,000 years old and it's an entire preventive lifestyle that we can live by. It shows us what we call our Ayurveda, the science of life. And it's an entire understanding of how we can live. What's really cool is when you look at the Ayurvedic textbooks, they, they actually outlined all of modern medicine, every subspecialty surgery, very intricate and detailed protocols for detoxification. So every time I open up those texts, I'm always so impressed. And what I like to teach out of it is that really preventive lifestyle that we can live that's anti inflammatory, that shows us how to live according to our circadian rhythm. There's many modern wellness trends that we teach nowadays that are rooted in that ancient wisdom. So when we talk about tongue scraping, oil pulling, circadian clock, these were those ancient principles that were taught 5,000 years ago and in modern day times we're pulling from them now and realizing that the ancient was so powerful and useful and the more we bring it into the current times, the better off we are.

How do you suspect that, you know, the wisdom keepers of this knowledge arrived to these conclusions like was were there down quote unquote downloads they received because they obviously didn't have the same scientific rigor that we do today, but they must have been tapped into some other level of knowledge or you know, kind of reconciliation that these things work. Do you, do you have any idea how that came to be?

Definitely. When I was writing the book, I started on really going into that origin, origin story and history and they do talk about how this wisdom was downloaded and then it was shared forward by stories and verbal teaching. And then finally a couple centuries in, someone sat down and wrote out the work that became those original texts.

Amazing, amazing. And you know, you know what I, what I love about Ayurveda is that it was relevant and true. Thousands of years ago. It's relevant probably even more today, just because we've become so misaligned from nature and. And our true selves. And it'll be even more relevant, you know, 5,000 years from now. So I love that it's both timeless and timely, and it kind of is something that we can sink our teeth into as a way of living, because it's not something that's going to change over time. Right. It's like foundational fundamentals that if we can start living our lives in alignment with these principles, it will greatly benefit us for, you know, decades and even generations to come, because we can pass this knowledge down.

Absolutely. And it's also adaptable. It's pretty flexible and moderate in its approach. And so what I also love is it's not like one dogma, one plan. There's only one way. Ayurveda is so foundational, but it gives you a little bit of. Of give in it. So you can decide, okay, my diet's going to be more that way, not this way, or my approach is going to be more customized. So I love that that has this customization to it, and it also really shows us how to customize our lifestyle to ourselves.

You know, what I really loved about. I was working with an Ayurvedic practitioner many years ago, Dr. Sarah Cruz. And just an amazing guy. Such an amazing woman. I love her. And one of the things that she taught me was that even though my dosha, which. That'll be my next question for you, my constitution, if you will, was pita, which is fire, my wife says vata, and we're like, well, how can we make these two different, you know, constitutions mesh together so we can have food together and we can function in our uniqueness. Right. Without having to compromise. Because I think a lot of couples compromise when they're making health choices, so they eat the way one person is supposed to eat. But what I learned is that there's ways to eat the same base foods, but then use different spices or chutneys or, you know, sauces that can help make the food more balanced for one person versus the other. So speaking of flexibility, it's very accommodating. So. So for people who are struggling with the idea of, like, how's my whole family going to eat this?

Right.

It doesn't have to be that way. Right. We can. We can accommodate each person's constitution based on little micro adjustments that suit that person better than the other.

Correct? Yeah. It's very flexible in that way. And so even in my own household, we cook a certain way. The foundation of food is there. Some of us are going to pull a salad in around that mealtime. Some will pull in more healthy fats and avocado. Some can keep it just the warm cooked, lighter meal and give up or let go of kind of the heavier vegetables or the grains. So yeah, you can really customize and flex with it according to your constitution.

Yeah. So it's a one size fits one approach that is very family friendly. I think that's important for, for women especially who are listening to this because that's the majority of our clients tends to be women and they tend to have to think about like what am I going to prepare for everybody? But this kind of gives a foundation to work with and then make adjustments on, on the back end. So I mentioned the word dosha, which is, you know, if Ayurveda veda is a new term to people, then dosha will be a new term. What's the working definition of a dosha and why is it important for people to know their dosha?

Sure. So doshas is a very big important concept out of Ayurveda. It's like the, the central concept of how we show people how to live a life that's more imbalanced and in tune for themselves. And when you take the doshas, doshas are based on the five elements. And what we teach is we're all born with our own dosha or constitution. And when I was writing my new book, the Inflammation Code, I really sat with it and thought, how am I going to take so many different Sanskrit words and translate them in a way we can all use? Because in the west, if we're going to throw in 18 different Sanskrit words to someone, we're going to lose their attention. It's going to be hard for them to say. So I renamed the doshas elemental design to really highlight that this is based on the elements and you can design your life around it. You can design an entire structure to your life and how you customize your self care rituals to your constitution. And so the first one of those is called vata. And vata is based on the elements of air and ether. And let me take one step back when we talk about these doshas or elemental designs, what we're saying is we're all born with our constitution in that moment of creation. It's the combination of your parents, it is the combination of the environment you were born into and you're at birth given your primary constitution. And most of us have a secondary constitution. And then some of us are actually balanced in all three. We call that three doshik when someone's carrying all three pretty equally. Now, over the course of your lifetime, this can become imbalanced. We all have different diets, upbringings, different traumas, life experiences that change us. And when that happens, you can become very imbalanced from your original home based constitution. And so our job as ayurvedic practitioners is to show you, hey, this was your original. Let me get you back to home. Because when we're off base, we don't feel like ourselves. And most women who find me say, I just don't feel like myself. I don't know why. I used to be so much more energetic and focused and my body looked like a totally different body before. And that's where sometimes it's that constitutional imbalance. And so when you look at all three of the constitutions, they're called vata, pitta and kapha. And in the west we pronounce them vata, pitta and kapha, so it's a little easier to say. And so when it comes to vata, that's typically a person, their elements are air and ether. So air, which is movement and space. They're not made of air and space, but their predominant tendencies are around that movement of air. Now you can either be like a beautiful warm breeze, you could be like a ceiling fan, constantly in motion and never stops air, could also be a tornado, could be pretty volatile. And so when we're talking about the traits of a vata person, this is someone who tends to be thin and wiry, so taller or shorter than most of their demographic. Maybe tall and lanky, or maybe short and petite and small boned. This is someone who is typically a longer oval face, thinner bones, kind of thinner structure. This is someone who, personality wise, is that element of movement. So everything is in motion, their body, their mind, their being. They rarely sit still. So if you mean someone who's constantly kind of fidgeting and moving and never in one spot, that's typically a vata person. Another vata tendency is they're so light and airy, they can go through their whole day. They can have coffee, green juice, tea, maybe some chips here or there, or celery. And by evening they're like, oh, I didn't eat today, no wonder I'm so tired. And they catch it much later than some of the other constitutions. And so vata people can have a tendency to be in such motion. They have creative ideas come through they're lighter, but they don't finish what they start. And so our homework for vata coming out of Ayurveda is let's teach you stillness. Let's bring in that meditation breath work. Let's bring in nature as the ultimate calming force. Let's teach you warm, grounded meals, routine, living on that circadian clock as a really grounding presence so you can stay balanced and thus thrive and not feel so. So much of those symptoms of vata. Vata symptoms can be dryness, cold, insomnia, gas bloating, constip, anxiety. And so if those are some of your symptoms, our job is to show you how to balance that.

And then, you know, many of the attributes you describe of avata are deepa, my wife, who's thin, who's wiry, who's probably like the ceiling fan.

Yes.

You know, if she doesn't get her steps in in the day, she'll walk around the center island in the kitchen like a ceiling fan, you know, just being in motion. And I'm like, why don't you just sit still? Like that's probably what you should be doing right now, not trying to get these steps and.

Right.

She doesn't like drafts. You know, she's very opposed to them. She likes to be warm and cozy and. And you know, soups are really grounding for her, as you describe. So, yeah, you're describing her to a T. And so there's a balanced dosha and there's imbalance. Right. So when they're imbalanced, what are, what are some of the. You, you mentioned some of the symptoms that might show up, but how can we clue in into some. If somebody's asking themselves, am I imbalanced? What are some of the telltale signs that they.

So imbalanced mind going 100 miles a minute, tending towards anxiety, like uncontrolled thoughts, when you're really kind of losing that control over staying centered, staying present, it's a lot of more that anxiety type of mind, restlessness in your sleep, insomnia. So waking up in the middle of the night, that's over anxious, over imbalanced vata energy. In the gut, we have dryness. In the intestines, we've got constipation if the system just won't move and won't go. If we've got a lot of gas going on, that's also vata energy. So a vata person can tend to be, like I said, they won't finish what they start. These are all signs of the imbalance and then when they are balanced, they're just beautiful, joyful movement energy. Like they are that one who has that almost like go getter, never stopping, beautiful energy in motion. And our job is to support the vata to feel like, yeah, I'm on point, I'm moving, I feel so good in my body. I'm creative, all my creative ideas are coming through. I feel supported. I'm finishing what I start. Like, that's a beautiful balance about that energy.

And you described a visual that really landed for me and I've never heard anyone explain it this way, but you can be a warm breeze, which sounds like what we'd want to be if we were balanced. Or you can be, you know, the ceiling fan just kind of circulating the air. Yeah. But not really going anywhere. And then you can be a tornado.

Yeah, right. A lot of times I see vatas and they're like a tornado and it's so much energy. Sometimes a vata will sit next to me and I'm like, oh my God, like that's a lot of movement energy for a human. And I literally have to like drop an energetic barrier because I'm like, you're going to pull me into the tornado. I can tell. So it's interesting when you can energetically tune into what the constitution is. Now you can really say, okay, like that's you. You keep that. Yeah.

Oh, I love that. Okay, so let's, let's go through the other constitution types. So elemental designs, as you call them.

Perfect. So pitta is fire with some water. And so a pitta person is medium bodied. They're not on the thin and wiry side. They're not on that sturdy, stronger side that we're going to get to, which is guffa. They're just right in the middle. Medium bodied, reddish skin, reddish hair, tendency towards early graying. This is someone who is all fire. So the personality is organized, sharp, kind of sharp in their tongue, sharp in their brain. They're very ambitious, go getter, passionate. When imbalanced, a pitta person can tend to be angry and frustrated like a volcano. They just erupt on the people around them and closest to them. So closest people can be collateral damage for pittas. Pittas have a strong digestive fire because that element is fire. And so that digestive fire is pretty voracious. So you never want to get hangry as a pitta because that's when things get real, off the rails. I'm a pitta, so I have to like really think about food on a pattern and schedule. So guilty, like, and my stomach will rumble. Like, I have days where I'm sitting here and my stomach is like, hello, I exist. Are you going to starve me to death? What's happening? And so pittas need to eat on time. Bitas love what imbalances them. So bitas love hot, oily, spicy, fried foods. It's like a craving of ours. Even though it's the one thing that will really tip the scales and cause us to be more imbalanced. And bitas tend to run inflamed because again, it's fires. And fires are inflammation. It's that heat in the system. We tend to run hot. So we're kind of those heaters that everyone's like, oh, you can keep me so warm. So bitta people are that passionate crew, ambitious, go getter, tend towards burnout because can go so far so fast and can almost leverage those fires in a bad way. Because bitas have that ability to go on adrenaline and go on cortisol and just go in that direction. Super ambitious. And so the balance for pitta is to treat yourself like a nuclear reactor. Like, know that you have that fire, you have that energy center. But if you can hydrate electrolytes, eat properly and balance and create enough sacred pauses and breaks throughout the day, nature can be very cooling and healing. So moving in nature, being in nature, then we can stay more balanced within the pitta constitution.

Hey, yeah, you're describing me to a T. And one of the other things I learned is that we tend to lose our hair too, right? Because we just like burn it off of our head.

Correct. My body does that. If I get really stressed, my hair will fall out and I'm like, what is happening in the world? That's not fair. That's not the punishment I want. But we can have a tendency towards acne, skin issues, hives, like the body gut skin connection will send it right out through your skin. So that's another sign from a pitta that your imbalance is all of a sudden bumps coming out of the body. You're like, oh, I did something. Is it dairy? Is it gluten? Like, what is the inflammatory thing for me that I did? Or was it diet with stress? And boom, the system reacted.

Okay, so what are some things that can help balance bita person?

So bitta people need to remember that we are seasonal circadian beings. So the summertime is when it's hottest. That's the season for us. So it's important to take your summer season as an off season or I Think of it as slowing down the race car and acknowledging there has to be a downtime season. Even athletes take downtime. And then with bitas, we really need to mitigate through food and drink. So staying hydrated, honoring sleep, not pushing sleep, which can be a bit of a tendency. And then through diet, like bringing in sleep, summer foods, nature always creates the exact thing we need to keep ourselves cool, calm and collected. So summer foods like watermelon, yogurt, rice. In Ayurveda we teach that any sweet food is actually cooling to the system. So when we're stressed and anxious and we all reach for chocolate and sweets and treats, you could also reach for any food that's actually just cooling on the inside. And you'll get the same result that you're looking for, that you're reaching for. So coconut water, anything with rice in it, you can put cinnamon on things and that'll create that coolness.

You know, One thing I've gravitated towards is using peppermint oil. Nice.

Yes.

Is that something that is good for me? Just I feel like it cools me down internally.

Exactly. Anything you can use to cool yourself. Peppermint tea is very cooling. Peppermint oil. We have a lot of essential oils and teas and herbs that we can play with. Cilantro is cooling to the system. Fennel can be cooling. So anything you can reach for that's cooling is fantastic.

Yeah, fennel. Fennel tea is actually quite delicious if nobody's tried it before. Another thing that, that comes up for me, I guess in this topic is you mentioned like greasy, oily, fatty, hot, you know, those type of foods. I know that when I eat some, like I, I enjoy and, and I gravitate towards those type of foods. Like if I'm having Indian food, I like for it to be really spicy and, and then I start sweating. Like my whole head starts sweating. And that's how I know I've had a good meal. But my wife looks over at me, she's like, what is wrong with you? I'm like, I'm clearly like imbalanced here. So what are some tips if we enjoy eating spicy foods? Because I think taking it off of my list of foods will be challenging for me.

Yeah.

What are some things that I could do or pitas could do to, to mitigate some of those things? I guess we mentioned some of them, but is there something that comes to mind, food related, that can help get, get me back in balance?

You know, in my fridge, I own a shelf called hot sauce, and I Cannot be without my 10 types of hot sauce at all times. I'm at the point where I travel with mini cholulas because I can't bear to eat breakfast without hot sauce on it. Like, how can a restaurant serve Tabasco? What a waste of my life. So I'm a big hot sauce chili person. Even dinner, I'll just put straight chili powder on the dinner because I'm like, this is so bland. It's been made for the children. I can't do this. So we have a palette for hot. And I personally am okay with it because the majority of the time, not all the time, I'm a pretty balanced bit that I can tell when I'm like, getting angry or frustrated about something. I'm like, okay, what do you need to cool down? Water. I'm always dehydrated. Hydration, peppermint tea. Or if any given meal is very spicy, just eat salad with it. Raw, cold vegetables will cool you right down. So I start a lot of meals with salad. That's the cooling grounding. And I'm still going to eat what's hot and burning hot because that's how I enjoy my food. I'm not going to take that away from myself. And so I'm a big believer in we're not meant to be perfect. We're meant to enjoy what we're meant to enjoy. But let's just understand where it is an imbalancing issue to us or where we can stay balanced with it.

Yeah. You know, I'm going out for Thai food tonight. So this is a very practical information that you're sharing with me. And usually I pass on the T's, but today I'm gonna ask for peppermint tea after my meal.

Exactly. And I carry it with me because most places don't offer it. They're like, we have green tea only. So in my bag. I'm constantly carrying it in my car when I travel. If you ever eat something that throws you off, you know, like in your digestive system after meals, like, oh, my God, I was intolerant to something in that. Peppermint tea can cool it right down. But when I go to a Thai restaurant, I am like chili oil gluten free. So I make it so hot so I can enjoy it. But yes, peppermint tea is the perfect antidote. Or that salad beforehand.

Okay, so bring a sweatband and bring some peppermint tea with me tonight. All right, I got it.

Exactly. Exactly.

So let's go into the third design.

Sure. So the third One is called Guffa and Guffa is earth and water. That's the primary element. So that really grounding aspect of Earth, that movement and flow of water. And so when we talk about a Gutha person, this is someone who physically is sturdy. They are stronger than most of the constitutions. They can lift heavier. Physically, they can tend to be a little bit, they can almost be bigger bones. It's like a more luscious body. This is someone who has round face, round eyes, round curlier hair, oilier skin. So really more supple skin as well. This is someone who personality wise is very one thing at a time. Imagine that Earth energy, it's slow moving. A tree doesn't grow overnight. And so they are very much slower in their speech, slower in their movement, very deliberate. They think about something before they just jump in. Vata jumps first. Pitta's like, sure, I'm in. But Kapha is like, I need a minute, like, let me decide if this is good for me. And so Kapha is also the most loyal friend. So in any group, that person who's thinking about everyone first, first, who's worried about everyone, wants everyone else to be okay and thinks of themselves last. That's a very Guffa personality trait. They're fiercely loyal. They're fiercely all about the people and not about like things and ambition and what some of the other constitutions are about. Guffa people have a tendency towards amazing sleep and slumber. This is your crew who can sleep the 10 hours and then wake up when they're rested. You almost want to let Guffa sleep in later because they need that sleep and they need the slow rise. They're not meant to jump out of bed in two seconds. This is someone who has a tendency towards a sluggish metabolism. That Guffa energy moves a little slower. So we want to support them in igniting that metabolism first thing in the morning and getting their energies moving. This is someone who's very one thing at a time. And so it's, it's the turtle who wins the race, it's not the, the hare who wins the race. And so it's about teaching the Kapha person to honor. Like, you are actually the most peaceful person out of all of us. You are the Zen one, you're the grounded one. When a Kapha person sits down at the end of their day, typically they cannot get up again. And so when I meet a Guffa, I'm like, I understand you finish your day by five or six and don't beat yourself up for not Getting up off the couch to go build a side hustle and another workout. And another thing, it's not in your nature, and that's okay. Like, honor your true nature. And then Kaphas also tend towards congestion in the chest, congested nose, all that because of that extra water. And so our balancing homework for Kapha is, let's get you moving. First thing we gotta move the energy. Let's give you warm cooked meals, smaller meals that are easy to digest because of that digestive fire that tends to be a little dampened. And then let's support you in building a lifestyle that supports you. Just because this world is trying to move at 200 miles an hour and that's current and trendy and modern, doesn't mean that that's good. And so Kapha is kind of holding that energy of Mother Earth mountain energy for all of us.

You know, it's really fascinating. Shivani, this is amazing information, and I'm starting to think of it through a series of different lenses. I mean, knowing this about yourself, how, how at. At what age can we learn this about ourselves? That's. That's my first question.

You can do a quiz on your children, like, at any age. I mean, they. You want them to present with some traits, right? So my kids, I would say by the time they were 8, 9, 10, you have an idea of what they are, right? Then you can start managing them as such while you're waiting to see were you correct.

Okay. And so then my second question is, is just knowing this about ourselves, how energy moves through our bodies, how we move through space and time and, and, you know, what foods impact us. I mean, I think this could be also important in career choice, right? In how we divide the roles of the household, even how we parent. I mean, there's just so many. So many practical applications of having this awareness besides just, you know, you know, quote, unquote health or weight loss or energy, the, you know, the. The things that we all want, obviously. But it goes so much further than that. Can you talk about that a little bit, too?

Yeah, you know, it. Thank you for that question. It does go so much deeper. It transcends a lot of things. And if we understood our constitution, we could even take that constitution understanding a layer deeper. In the book, I broke our constitutions down into not just your constitution, physically, physical, personality and these things, but mental, emotional, reactionary, and physical. And it was under the work of Dr. John Douyard. He published the Dosha quiz that way first. And when I saw it, I was like, this makes so much more sense. I'm a pitta body. Sure, I was given a pitta body. I got that one. Mentally, I'm very pitta. But also I carry a very vata mind in myself and so my vata mind usually wants to go 200 miles an hour. Social media is the worst thing for my vata mind because it's like, oh my gosh, you could do. Give me a list of 200 things I could do. And I'm like driving my whole team insane all the time with my ideas. We should do this, we should do that. Social media is the perfect driver of, I think angst and anxiety in the modern day world. And then I have a kapha tendency. I'm a mom, so I do purposely navigate holding a certain amount of kapha in my day so that at 4 I can literally take my speed and throttle down. I use T's and adaptogens to do that to hold a certain amount of kapha because otherwise being a mom at a full fit, the throttle speed is actually not conducive sometimes to raising kids. And so I do guide my clients on look, you need to understand thyself and understand where are you able to thrive the most? Where do you need to get support? A lot of times I'm like, you need to hire someone to clean, you need to hire someone to cook, you need to hire more support because this is too much for your nervous system. This is too much for who you are and what you're trying to accomplish. But yes, we can actually take that dosha elemental design idea and bring it into what career should we be doing. We're not all meant to be doing the career we've self chosen. And sometimes you can switch careers and then you really thrive. Like I can honestly say the way I started my company is not the way I will end my company. And this way that I do my company is perfect. I'm meant to sit still for longer. I'm not meant to be a road warrior. And so understanding constitution can be one of those game changing things we bring into our lives.

Yeah. Because I find that, you know, without this awareness we might be working, you know, an uphill battle. Even though even like the time of day we start work right. Like how we structure our day, whether we, you know, start a little bit later or earlier. And even sometimes, like I find that if we don't understand this about ourselves, we might compromise based on our partner's dosha and they might be like, what's wrong with you? How come you don't under like, why can't you be this way? And they're trying to change you instead of balance you, right? And think the ultimate flex here is like, how do we get this person back into balance? How do we honor their body as well as someone who cares about the other individual, like whether it's your kids or your partner or even your. Even your teammates. Right. If you have a business that you're running, I think this application can be across the board in so many areas of our life, if not all areas of our life.

It's true. It can really transcend. I had a client once where she was a vata and she was with a Kafa and it was pandemic and they were completely, oh my God, small apartment. And I just looked at her and I was like, do you want to kill him? And she goes, yeah, I really do. I'm over it. And I said, this is a quite a mismatch of dosha and you just want to go 200 miles an hour and move in nature and just you have so much boundless energy and he wants to sit on the couch and you're trying to drag him off. Prophet, that doesn't work. You have to honor. He is mountain grounded energy. And because of him, because of that grounded energy, you can fly. So learn to honor the energy we each hold and why that is so special. In my case, I'm married to quite a bita. It's like an Aries pitha. He wants to wake up at five, he's out the door, he can work all day till nine. I'm a much more grounded, centered, balanced pitha or just a different type of pitta, really. I have to wake up slow. I cannot be ripped out of my sleep in the morning. The whole day will be dysregulated. I have to honor my sacred pauses throughout the day to fuel as a pitta. I have to eat. I really have to build a life where I get to eat my three, four times a day or it's not going to work. Versus he can just churn and burn and burn and keep working. And so what I do to honor him is I make sure he eats. So if he's about to leave the house at 10 o' clock for soccer games and things, I'm like, you know what? Let me feed the pitta. Because I know what will happen. He's going to enjoy the kids more, he'll be nicer. And so we can actually really start to understand who we are married to, who are we with and how do we support each constitution in our household and that actually gives us the result we want? What do I want? I want a happy, healthy home. I want children and family who are more regulated and at peace. There's no point in all this work if I'm only doing it for myself. And so when you start to understand what each shareholder needs around you, all of a sudden you can shift the entire balance of the home and create that deeper, higher quality life you want.

Yeah. And you know, I love that. And what it also brings up for me is I'm just thinking about the, again, the practical implications of this in my own house. That's what's running through my head. Because my son, he likes to have. There has to be something in his stomach all the time. Right. And so he's got this, like, fire that I'm sure is lighting up and burning inside of me. He's got to keep throwing logs on it.

Right.

And my wife, who's, who's a more on the vata side, who fuels herself less frequently. Right?

Yeah.

She's looking at him like, what's wrong with you? Like, why don't you eat square meals? Like, why do you have to keep snacking? And. And it just creates, it's not fights, but it just creates this imbalance, energetic imbalance. But it. Having this awareness would eliminate that and allow her to probably lean in, into like, hey, hey. How do I nourish this part of you instead of making it wrong? How do I support you so that, you know, you can live in awareness in your own body instead of projecting my dosha onto somebody else.

Correct.

Right. And trying to change them. It's. It's really like, how do we get this person back in balance?

Yeah. And we teach health and so bring Ayurveda to modern times. And in modern day health, we teach don't snack. Why are you snacking all the time? It's three meals, one meal a day. Like, we teach pretty hard fasting rules nowadays. And so if you take that and bring a doshik understanding in, we're not all meant to fast the same way. We're not all meant to bring the same biohacking tools on board that are so hard, hot, or so cold. We're meant to really understand where are we coming at it. And so I agree with you. I have a vata pitta type of son and he just wants to eat all the time. I keep finding wrappers and bowls of food in drawers and under couches. And I'm like, what? You should eat three Square meals. I have the same thought process. And then I realized, you know, I'm not dealing with that metabolism. So I'm just going to try to keep putting fresh things in there.

Right. Yeah, there you go. We can support, support the practice. Right. Or support the balancing.

Exactly.

So let's talk about your book a little bit because I would imagine that when people get a copy, they're going to be able to dive deeper into their dosha. I find, I find like this is the ultimate, like personal and self development practice is knowing your dosha. Because everything else starts from there. Because then you can also discard things that aren't relevant to you. Right. Like even, even if we're, you know, following like a business mentor or we're following somebody who we're admiring from afar, you know, they might have a different, totally different, you know, elemental design than we do. And what works for them may not work for us. In fact, it could backfire for us. So I feel like knowing this is like, really should be the first step for most people. And I've known my dosha for probably like around 10 years now, but I could always revisit this. So I'm excited to read your, read your book because that'll help me revisit this process and then really read it with my wife in context and my son in context now that he's older. It'll be even more valuable for us to all really have this awareness around ourselves and learn how we can nurture ourselves. Right. And it's not selfish, right? It's, it's, you know, selfish if we don't take care of ourselves. And so giving him these tools at the age of 15, I feel like will be really valuable too.

Absolutely. In the book, I talk about elemental design first because it's the foundation. Once you understand your constitution, what you were born with, where you're at now and how you're going to walk yourself home is that first key step. And I do go much deeper into it. So. So people can start to tune into that nuance of how to apply this into the different areas of their life. And then each chapter thereafter is how to customize all the pillars of Ayurvedic wisdom to your elemental design. So second chapter is circadian rhythm, because that's another big one, is the rhythm you build. And each of our rhythms is different. We have different lives, different careers, different lifestyles, different weather patterns we live in. So we're going to build those circadian rhythms differently. And then I teach about gut health from Ayurveda because we each need to manage that gut digestive fire a little differently. Then I teach about the Ayurvedic diet, which is pretty open. It's really about living a sathvic diet lifestyle, which means really peaceful. It's like, how do you nourish yourself to be your most peaceful self? Ayurveda didn't say you have to eat this and you cannot eat that. It was pretty malleable in that way. Then I teach about environmental toxins, which can be another cause of inflammation. And I think it's so important to highlight that, like, let's pay attention to what's in our environment that could be causing the inflammation we're battling with and struggling with. And then I teach about self care detox rituals, because that's a big part of Ayurveda is how do we use self care as the rhythm builder in our day for gentle detoxification? Sometimes that toxic burden is just a lot and daily self care can help. And then finally, I taught about super spices because I'm a big fan of spices. My PhD is turmeric. So that's where I come from a lot of the time with solutions. And the final chapter was actually mental inflammation. As I was writing the book, I thought, you know, I'm going to teach a lot in here about how to build a lifestyle, a rhythm. But if we actually forget that our mental emotional stress can cause the inflammation physically, we're going to kind of miss the boat here because we're going to do a lot of work. A lot of us like to do the work of health and wellness, but we sometimes miss out on that final piece where that's our frontier of work we need to do.

Yeah, inflammation plays a big role in serotonin production, which plays a role in pain. And so if we can kind of use, you know, turmeric to, to lower inflammation in the body or even some of these other concepts that we talked about. Today, living more in alignment with our rhythms, with our elemental design can really create a, you know, a significant shift in somebody's, in somebody's health in a very short period of time. Right. Like the, the fastest thing, the way, the way I found the body has responded the fastest is when we move into alignment instead of forcing it to do something where it's resisting. If we find, you know, that, that base, right, that alignment that you discussed earlier, then the body just falls right in order, right in place.

Exactly, exactly. And that's the goal of Ayurveda is body, mind and spirit and alignment like you said, we're not trying to battle with the body. That's when you're going to lose, is if you're really going to go at it. That's the beauty of elemental design is know thyself, know thy concept, constitution. I actually love personality quizzes. So many of us know our Myers Briggs. We know our human design, our enneagram, our astrology. We love understanding ourselves. And I think that's where elemental design kind of highlights for you. These are your tendencies and these are your natural tendencies. How can you support yourself to stay balanced within that so that your daily life, Like I literally live according to a pitta rhythm, and that makes my life easier. And when I travel and I step off rhythm, all of a sudden it's dysbiosis. Gut goes off, sleep goes off, fatigue, and all those things set in. And so Ayurveda teaches us how to just come right back into rhythm, click back in. And when you click back into your rhythm and your alignment, then though those results you're seeking with your body and health come right back.

Makes a lot of sense. Where can people run up to resistance in implementing this? Because I know you've helped a lot of people. What do you find are common blocks that prevent people from leaning in?

You know, a lot of times, based on your constitution, you're going to have certain things you reach for. So as a pitta, when I'm stressed, I just want sugar. And I have certain things. I love my dark chocolate with almonds. I'm a big nachos girl. I'm from Texas, so if I have like the worst day, I will. That will be the first thing I go to. And so what I've started to do is I have the awareness. And this is what I teach is have the awareness. When you're reaching for something, just ask yourself why. And that one moment of pause is all you need to say. Okay, you had a stressful day, I got you. You can still have the nachos, it's fine. But what else can I give you that will actually quench that feeling? In my case, it's adaptogenic teas. So I build teas that are anti anxiety or cool down menopause or give you better sleep. Like, whatever I can do to help those issues. But that's where the most resistance comes, is we've built these, like, really deep ingrained patterns in our lives of, oh, I'm stressed. I'm going to reach for sugar, I'm going to reach for wine, I'm going to reach for Something or if you're guffa, I'm gonna sit on the couch and netflix and chill and nobody can take this from me, this is how I am. It's like, well, yes, it's how you are because that's your tendency from Ayurveda. Sure, but how can we support ourselves before or after to get what we want here? Maybe it is a really great dinner, then you sit and chill so you're not gonna reach for the snacks, eat later, throw off your fasting window and things like that. How can we ensure you walked and moved enough in your day so that you'll get that, I mean gapha will get great sleep no matter what, but so that you got your movement in for the day before your phenomenal sleep. With vatas it's so easy to be imbalanced. So how can we as vata say, okay, I'm going to be grounded. I find it hardest to balance the vata crew because they're literally, when imbalanced they're like a tornado. And to me it's hard. I'm not a vata myself, so I'm always like, what do I do with you guys? But I have found that if you show them that three square meals, if you give them tea as a warming grounding tool, if you keep giving them the tools and they start with just one, they start to feel more productive. And that productivity, that grounding, giving the results is where all of a sudden the resistance goes away because they start to feel that centered, grounded feeling that we want for everyone to feel. I want everyone to feel wholesome and nourished. And I find in nowadays modern day society, many of us are feeling depleted, fatigued, exhausted, mind is scattered. And so Ayurveda is really trying to show us we can bring it all back to sovereignty, we can bring it all back to our own powerful self. And so the resistance is usually those things have become our grain patterns or they're more fun like Netflix and Chill with dark chocolate is definitely more fun than what I'm going to teach. But what I teach is the Ayurvedic self care rituals. And then you start to actually learn how much more nourishing that is. And then you can let go of those past habits.

You know what's spinning up in my head, the visual that I have are three circles and then a fourth circle in the middle. And so we could be really imbalanced in, in various areas of our life. But when you, when you kind of look at the net effect, it could help, it could make Us feel centered. Right. So if we look at the center of all three of those other circles, it could center us, however, and you know it could. It takes a lot of energy to operate that way.

Correct.

If you could get all of those circles overlapping each other in the middle, it's like a zero energy point where it takes zero energy to balance yourself because you're already there, versus expending all this energy outside of you to try to bring things into center. And that might look like exercise and supplements and gadgets and gizmos and all these other things that are trying to bring us back to center. But if we don't know who we are, we don't even know what that center is.

True, true. And I'm a big fan of systems. So I build my dosha out as systems. I live as a pitta first, and I know the schedule and the rhythm. I have to live by the type of food I have to eat, the volume of tea. So I keep my house stocked for myself so that I can live right in that center. And that's what I want everyone to know is once you know thyself, you can start to build systems, schedules and rhythms and alarms and things that remind you to stay right in your middle. And then you can start supporting everyone around you as well.

Yeah. So it's a process of centering is like finding ourselves centering ourselves, walking ourselves home. I love the visuals and the nomenclature that you're using. It really makes it easy as a concept to grasp for people. Absolutely. Now, you mentioned circadian rhythm. What are some of the other rhythms that we want to pay attention to in our day to day function?

You know, in Ayurveda, circadian is such a key topic. And we know through modern science, we all have the genes for the circadian clock within us. Every cell of our body is attuned to that. What Ayurveda says is, remember, we have seasons of life. We have seasons that are the natural seasons around us. So fall, winter season, you know, summer, spring. But we also have the moon, moon cycle, that's another cycle. We live by the moon cycle every month. And then we have our daily cycle with our own constitution. And so when you think of it that way, you kind of have a more expansive view. An interesting thing I like to talk about in women's health is that last piece of life, last 20, 30, 40 years. The last third is actually the vata time of life. And so when we talk about perimenopause, menopause, which is a big topic right now, for it's finally coming online as a big topic. Vata means dryness. So vaginal dryness, eyes are dry, skin is dry, everything's dry, cool. We get really like, we have this misalignment with temperature. People are getting hot flashes, night sweats or they're feeling dry, cold, brittle bones, things like that. So it's interesting when we look at Ayurveda and understand, okay, like the middle of my life is very pitham, meant to be productive. And work beginning is very kapha slow. It's about growth and expanding and then that last phase is more vata. And I'm meant to really build, grounding, settling practices. We're meant to, according to even Hinduism, we're meant to like meditate and really build the Zen lifestyle at the end of life. And Ayurveda teaches like that's a vata, time of life, ground, ground, ground yourself. And so understanding that can be enlightening too because a lot of times we're moving into careers, sometimes later in life. I'm in 45, like that's my age, 45 perimenopause. And I'm finally hitting my stride in my work and business life. And I just want to go. And then we're building longevity and health span. But how are we supporting and balancing vata for that entire last season of life? Another thing is living according to your seasons. Betha people, our hottest season is summer. So can you restructure your year to honor yourself? So I have had to really lecture myself and say your summer season's your off season. And my team is always like, no, we need you 24, seven, we need you productive. And I say, you know what, you want to give me one off camera season and that's how you get to have me joyful and ready for the other nine. But if you take away that season, I will be a burnt out mess all year long.

And then as a fellow pita, what does that look like? Taking, have taking that season or reflect? Yeah, I mean when you're taking a season off, like what does that look like for you?

So in my most ideal world, I want to not touch my existing business and I just want to write books in cafes like a creative writer. Like just allow the space for my life to be that chill. My kids are finally teenagers and my husband had this great idea that we should leave the country for a month of every year. So we've done it twice now and we lived in Italy for three weeks two years ago and it was the best time. So really I Just want to go live in Italy and have no one talk to me other than my family. Barring that, that's kind of hard for many people. And not everyone's an entrepreneur and not all entrepreneurial ventures really want to let you go for that many months. What I do is I tell my team, look, we're going to go literally 90 to 100 miles an hour nine months of the year. And in the summer I'm blocking the calendly. I can take meetings, but I will never be on camera in the summer because energetically, that's a lot of work to show up at your most aligned self. I pretend like I'm a lion. You know how lions lay in the shade and the heat, that's what I do. I just take the schedule back a few notches and anything that's intense, like a fire, I say no. And that's, that's my approach is just, just chill, calm down. There's less conferences in the summer. If you think about it, summer season is when school is off. We're meant to as kids, we're meant to just chill and learn new things and go to camp and explore. As adults, we choose to just go full throttle. But in Europe, they take it as off season. They all take August off, they travel. And so I tried to just embody that. It's like, let me take a couple weeks off, let me make it a little easier, let me enjoy the children in the season they are off. And then in the business, let me just, let me tone things down. We don't have to be at 100% intensity all year. That's a choice.

Yeah. You just, you just gave me life changing advice. So thank you. Because we, we every year in August we take a, we do a bucket list trip because it's my son's birthday.

Yeah.

And this year we did something. We, we, we were traveling so much this year that we decided to do something more home based. So I did four days with my community, I did four days with about eight practitioners in the back country and then I did four days with my son in the back country in August. And now, you know, and you, then you kind of squeeze work in between there somewhere. And I'm like, now I'm like, screw that, I'm taking August off. So thank you for that.

Yeah, it makes a big deal because sometimes, I mean, in my case I am, I don't, I want to impact the whole planet. And that's a huge energetic commitment to make impact so many. And I know you're in that line of work too. So that requires such a powerful digestive fire. Agni, like we call it Agni. So Agni in the mind, Agni in your centers, all energy centers. Fires can't burn 24, seven forever. There's just no way. We have to remember to tend that fire, rebuild that fire recovery, reconstitute it, regenerate. That's how I look at my summer is like pause in that sacred pause so that the fire can burn so bright the rest of the year because bit the fire. When we have that intensity of fire going into summer, it can really over burn our fire, the existing fire. So anyone who's an intense bita, which I am, it'll just boom. Like it almost ramps you up, Overburn, volcanic eruption, all those things.

That makes a lot of sense. So where would that fall for for.

Someone who's Vata, so a vata person. If you hit fall season and you went so hard and fast through the summer and you just run into fall. Fall is when leaves change, temperature changes, the leaves fall and the winds blow. It'll just blow wind over the fires and cause an even bigger disturbance. So we're meant to show up into each season really ready for it, maybe do a gentle detox beforehand. In the case of Pittas, it's like let's cool down the jets to enter the summer season. In the case of Vata, it's like let's show up our most grounded, centered self. So showing up to fall without a crazy holiday list. It's why if you notice in emails, I get a lot of emails in fall and they're like, are you overwhelmed? Are you over this? And it's because we hit fall, sometimes going into holiday days really it dysregulated. So it's show up grounded, show up ready for those pumpkins, all the fall foods are grounding. And a lot of times we show up to a season where like I still eat my salmon, my salad, my cold smoothies, my protein shakes. We show up really rigid in our beliefs of what's right. And what Ayurveda is teaching us is look, honor the season right in front of you. Everything Mother Earth is going to give you is going to balance you. You are meant to slow down for that season. So vata should slow down for fall, Kapha should slow down for winter and actually hibernate. They say we're not meant to have New year's on the 31st. That's a modern construct. And if you looked at the old calendars, I think the pagan calendars they honored that New Year's is on summer solstice, after the winter was done. And we were actually meant to come out of the caves and into the sun. So Gaffas are meant to really just relish in that winter hibernation season. And these are some really beautiful timelines that are ancient that we've let go of. But if we pause and look at our calendars and tune into ourselves, I literally take the summer and think, no. Every answer I'm going to give is no, unless you're really worth it. And from a work standpoint, you'd have to be like a really interesting person to be worth it over my health and my children. And so each look at the season that way, vata as well, and then kapha as well.

Okay, that makes total sense. And I, and I like that because sometimes you're trying to do both. Yeah. You're trying to work and relax. And you said something earlier that, that I just wanted to highlight again is that professionals take a break, amateurs break down.

True.

And so if we just keep pushing ourselves, we're going to burn down. We're going to, we're going to burn out, we're going to break down, and then we're going to be wishing that we took that break. So it's the professionals that have, you know, they call that an off season, but it's active recovery. Right. You're actively involved in the recovery process instead of letting, assuming it's going to happen. And, you know, maybe for the first four decades of our life we could get away with that. But eventually, you know, mother nature and time start catching up with you and, you know, you can't negotiate with your nature and you can't bargain with your biology. So you gotta start to learn to live with it and in alignment with it.

Absolutely. And I love that term, active recovery. What a beautiful way to explain those off seasons. Because someone could take off season and just become really unhealthy. Like they could just chill and eat and engorge. Like, it could be a really interesting moment where you think, okay, I'm just gonna do nothing. It's not nothing. It's actually how do I reinvest in myself, rebuild, recharge, rejoin, rejuvenate for the season ahead. And so Ayurveda taught that it's important to detox at the intersection of seasons. And Ayurveda teaches about doing big annual detoxes as well. And so in modern day time, I teach, look, if you don't have time for the big three week detox and you can't do the big ones, at least do the little ones. And it's so important to in at the intersections of season. So submerge to spring, spring to summer. Right. There is a good time for Pittas to detox, especially. And then where summer meets fall and fall meets winter and winter meets spring is a big one because that's when all the bitter root vegetables come out. Bitter vegetables come out that are then there to clean us and clear us. So there's a lot of wisdom in Ayurveda that's just there for us to take and embody and practice that can really shift. Like you said, our biology, our recovery and our health overall.

You know, the more I speak to anyone about Ayurveda, the more I want to like, lean all in and not just apply it to myself personally or I can immediately see the value of it right away. But like, what, What? Like if I wanted to become an Ayurvedic practitioner, like, because people are probably watching this who are practitioners themselves or people who are looking to, you know, go into the health space. What is that like to become an Ayurvedic practitioner? And maybe you could walk us through that for a couple minutes.

Sure. So the greatest thing I will ever do, I think, is inspire people to go study Ayurveda, because so many people I know have now become Ayurvedic practitioners. I'm like, that is the gift right there. My book editor of my first book became a practitioner. So we have a lot of schools in the United States. We have Maharishi University, California college of Ayurveda. Dr. Laud has his own Ayurveda school. He's now in North Carolina, Asheville. He's the father bringing Ayurveda into the United States so beautifully. We have many others as well. I don't know all the names. And so when you study Ayurveda, unfortunately it's not fully accredited in the United States yet. So we don't have acupuncture level status of licensure in every state. They are fighting for that. So there's a California contingency, a Florida contingency. Everyone's working now to get that accreditation status and licensure status. But we do have two bodies. We have nama, National Ayurvedic Medical Association. We have another one called apna, Ayurvedic association of Professionals, something Ayurveda. And so you can look at those two to kind of see all the Ayurveda schools that exist out there. And there's different levels so you could start as easy as Ayurveda nutrition coach, Ayurveda lifestyle coach. There's body work as well. So yoga with Ayurveda, there's Yoga Nidra, which can fall under Ayurveda, there's Marma Point therapy. So a lot of massage therapists actually learn Ayurveda as part of their training and they always love trying to understand how to take that Ayurvedic wisdom deeper. And so that's actually a great place to start. Typically to be an Ayurvedic doctor full on, you need to be having a B A M S Bachelor, Bachelor's of Ayurvedic Medical Sciences out of India because that's where they work in the hospitals and do that really deep clinical work. But we are starting to have some of those offerings here. I actually had studied all of Ayurveda in my masters, which by the way, I could do the same masters forever and I would still have only touched the surface of Ayurveda. It's so vast and, and I love studying so I think we should all go get some level of understanding and study in ayurveda. Ayurveda. My PhD was on turmeric and now the people around me are like, you should have finished. Like I could have gone on and done my clinicals to kind of finish the depth of studies to be a complete Ayurvedic doctor where you would learn some of those things like tongue analysis, pulse diagnosis and really sitting with someone to dig into their clinical issues. So that's actually my next frontier as well. I never planned to be an Ayurvedic doctor. I always planned to just build the things we need to apply, apply it to ourselves. And that's what I've done. I've built a supplement company and a tea company and I crave to build the self self care tools for us too. But I also feel like we're living in a world that's pretty polluted and sick and so we need as many of us as possible ready to really assess and then diagnose and then get into more of the treating from an Ayurvedic perspective as well.

Beautiful, I love that. Thank you. Before we wrap things up, I want you to talk about the book. Tell us more about the book, tell us what inspired you to write it. I can obviously tell your passion about Ayurvedic but Ayurvedic practices and I want to know, you know, what it took to write the book and why you're so excited about it and why should, why should people read it for sure?

So I, I think I underestimated what writing a book means. I'm a very overzealous person. When I see something I want to do, I'm like, yes, I'll just do it. Thank God I have a team around me who's always like, one thing at a time. We can't execute 18 ideas at once. Let's stage them. Writing that book was such a beautiful experience. I literally sat in a room in Houston, where I'm from, and just it poured out of me in two weeks and it was done. And then I sat with my editor and she's like, you write, you think way faster than you write. So we went through and edited it and smoothed it out, but it's truly the ayurvedic framework that I think we could all use to build the lifestyle into our lives that is preventive and anti inflammatory. So that's why I called it the inflammation code. Because with my family history, with my health background, I know inflammation is a huge root cause issue. And Ayurveda shows us how to really combat that, that inflammation through lifestyle. And I can't wait to write future books now, like on each different issue that I think we can help people with from aa. But this book was written for that woman who's like, I am suffering. Something is wrong. I don't feel like myself. I don't have the same energy, the same focus. My body is not listening to me. I need a different toolkit. I'm not getting the toolkit I need. Where can I go get some information? Information on a different approach altogether. And that's what's in the book is the ayurvedic lifestyle.

Okay, I love it. And where can people grab their copy?

So the book is@theinflammationcode.com and then on my website, drshvani.com I have the elemental design quiz and lots of handouts and things for everyone to apply that book to their lives.

Okay, so it's just DrShivani.com where people can go and take that quiz.

Yes.

Okay, I'm gonna go do it right now and verify or, you know, what I already know about myself, but also, you know, dive a little bit deeper into this because there's nothing more interesting than learning about yourself.

Yeah, right.

That's, that's what I've discovered is like when. It's, when we're learning about something external to us, like a disease or a dysfunction, it's it's got a certain energy to it. But when we're learning about ourselves and our true nature and how to, you know, bring ourselves back to center, I find there's a different, very different energy attached to that.

Absolutely. And as practitioners, the more we align to our true selves, the more everyone sees what's possible for their own health, for their own vitality, for their own energy. So a lot of times people are like, how do you have so much energy? I'm like, I. I build my life for my energy level. That's the whole point of everything I do. And I also take enough breaks, walks in nature, I practice tea time is me time. Five times a day. I do what I have to to really stay balanced and, and then we can inspire others. Right. Through our own self awareness.

Well, we gotta light the fire in us. Right. To light it in others. So it's perfect as from one pita to another. Right. We gotta keep that fire going.

Exactly.

And okay. Amazing. Well, I'll be sure to post these links in the show notes and let everyone know where they can go and test themselves. Certainly. Pick up a copy of the book. Mine's on order, so I'm waiting for it to come in. And I'm super excited to help spread this message. I mean, it really is powerful and very needed, very timely and very timeless wisdom that we can all make that investment in ourselves to learn about who we are and live in alignment with who we are. Because there's going to be no resistance there. Right. When we're fighting disease and illness and approaching health from that lens, there's this battle going on. True. And it's very transient. Right. Even if you learn how to tackle such and such disease, if you're still living out of balance, you might develop another disease down the road and have to learn a whole new vernacular and how to tackle that. But if you learn to live, you know, in alignment with who you are, then there's less deviation from that center, which allows you to live an amazing, super high quality of life. Not just from a health perspective, but from a career perspective, relationship perspective, contribution perspective. It really transcends all areas of our life. So thank you for doing this work and sharing it with all of us.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

It's my pleasure. Have an amazing rest of your day.